Global News by Topic: Community
Part 1 in a Series: Radio and Development
SRINAGAR, KASHMIR, INDIA – Kulsum Dilawar, 16, stands up nervously before sitting back down on the edge of her bed, her eyes gazing down at the floor. Wearing a simple outfit and a printed scarf covering her hair, she flips through the pages of her notebook.
“Can we talk outside?” she mutters.
ISEYIN, NIGERIA – Bamidele Alhazan, who is in her 70s, is sitting on a mat with her legs stretched out in front of her in her house in Iseyin, a city in southwestern Nigeria.
Alhazan is growing old. Not only have wrinkles nestled in around her eyes, but her traditional marks are also fading.
DIKOME BALUE, CAMEROON – James Elangwe, 87, is a native of Dikome Balue. Dikome Balue is one of the 28 villages that make up the Balue tribe in the Ndian division of Cameroon’s Southwestern province.
Of the 10 tribes that make up the Oroko community in Cameroon, the Balue is the only clan that practices matrilineality, the practice whereby inheritance passes through the female line.
NAIROBI, KENYA – It is 2:30 p.m. in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum. The sun is vengefully hot, and foreheads are polka-dotted with sweat droplets.
A 5-foot-5-inch figure wearing a green and white checkered dress, matching socks and a red sweater approaches from the shade. With each step the shadowy figure takes, the bright sunshine reveals the face of a smiling young girl. She cradles a wooden box in her sturdy arms like a newborn.
KATHMANDU, NEPAL – “What had my little son and myself done that my husband brought home a second wife?” asks a frail-looking Janaki Adhikari.
Her eyes well up with tears.
“Yes, I then divorced him and raised my son on my own,” she says. “He is now 15 years old.”